Tweets, Twits and Testimony

The Pre-Tweet:  Hours before former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National Security James Clapper testified in front of a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, Trump, suspecting bad news was on its way, threw tweet shade at Yates, calling for her to be asked “how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to WH Council” (his spelling error, not mine).  He had every reason to be concerned.  Even before Yates testified, NBC reported that right after the election Obama warned Trump not to rely on Flynn and not to appoint him to the national security adviser position, advice Trump dismissed as partisan hogwash.   Trump and his minions, Spicer and Priebus, stuck with the party line that the White House had done nothing wrong by failing to subject Flynn to the more rigorous vetting customarily undertaken for White House advisers before putting him in charge of national secrets because that guy Obama, whose warning he chose to ignore, hadn’t blocked Flynn’s routine security clearance renewal.    

The Yates Testimony:  Yates testimony was professional, convincing and provided a damning picture of the White House’s shocking incompetence and possible criminal indifference with regard to Flynn.  Although her testimony was limited to what she could reveal publicly, Yates was able to say that once the FBI learned that Flynn had been talking sanctions relief with Russian Ambassador Kislyak they “interviewed” him at the White House and reported enough damming information back to her that she immediately insisted on a sit down with White House Counsel Don McGahn where she told him that the FBI knew Flynn had discussed sanction relief with Kislyak, had lied to Pence who was misleading the American public, and was at risk of being blackmailed by the Russians for the lie and for some mysterious underlying conduct that she couldn’t reveal at the hearing.  Since everyone in Trumpland lies, McGahn initially had a hard time understanding why lying between members of the White House staff was such a big deal.  She had to hammer home that “you don’t want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians” before finally getting McGahn to realize that Flynn might be a problem.  She met with McGahn again the next day and arranged for him to get access to some evidence he wanted to see.  For Yates the story ended there because she was then fired by the White House over the Travel Ban and probably her Flynn revelations and couldn’t confirm whether or not McGahn actually reviewed the Flynn files.  For eighteen more days Flynn continued to serve as national security adviser, participating in important White House meetings, hiring staff, sitting in on a call with Putin, attending meetings with world leaders and acting like a guy who thought he would be around for the duration of the Trump administration until the Washington Post broke the story that led to his firing.

And Clapper too:  Several Republican senators focused in on those really important issues:  leaks and unmasking procedures.  Dutifully responding to Trump’s tweeted request they asked Clapper and Yates whether they ever talked to the press and whether either one of them was the source of the leak that led to the Washington Post Flynn article, the article that ended Flynn’s tenure when his boss still wanted to keep him around.  Clapper and Yates adamantly denied being the source of any leaks, ever, but when asked did admit to knowing a reporter or two.  Frustrated by the diversion from the bigger problem Clapper pulled the errant Republicans back to what he called the “transcendent” issue of our time, stopping Russian influence in the elections before it “further erodes the fabric of our democracy.”

Travel Ban:  While the focus of the hearing was supposed to be intelligence and Flynn, many of the Republicans, including Senate wingnut Ted Cruz laid into Yates for refusing to defend the Travel Ban.  She held her own, defended her position and blew Cruz away when he tried to take her down with an incomplete legal citation and ignored him when he went off topic and asked if she would arrest someone who had her emails forwarded to her husband’s computer, a snide reference to Huma Abedin.  A few of the Republicans attacked Yates’ refusal to defend the ban as a dereliction of her duties to the president even though she was specifically asked if she would be able to stand up to a president who asked her to do defend a position that she thought was wrong at her confirmation hearing by none other than then Senator Jeff Sessions.  We also learned for the first time that the White House kept the Travel Ban so secret that Yates only learned about it in her morning paper even though McGahn was reviewing the final version when she met with him to discuss Flynn.  As to the ban, judges around the country have so far agreed with Yates assessment.  Travel Ban 2.0 was back in the 4^th Circuit courts on Monday where several judges continued to focus on Trump’s campaign call for a Muslim ban,  the call that taints the constitutionality of the ban and was still on Trump’s campaign website until yesterday afternoon when it was finally taken down only after a reporter pointed it out at Spicer’s daily news conference.     

Post Tweets:  After testimony ended Trump, who still won’t acknowledge the serious damage that Russian interference is doing to the US electoral process, tweeted that  Yates’ testimony was old news, that the Russian collusion story is a hoax and that the investigations are a waste of taxpayer money.  Then we learned that the White House is planning to ramp up military activities in Afghanistan because war is a good diversion from all that other stuff.

Conflict Anyone: The Yates testimony was the day’s big story but the Kushner family did provide a little comic relief after it was reported that Kushner’s sister got “caught” using the Trump card while marketing US real estate in China.  She implied that investors who anted up the requisite $500,000 would get preferential consideration for their EB-5 “golden visa” applications because of her brother’s connections.  Her last minute efforts to ban the press from her presentation to cover up her pitch didn’t work out.